NASA to Boost Speed of Deep Space Communications

by Jeremy Hsu, SPACE.com Contributor | January 22, 2010 03:45pm ET

View of the Canberra Complex showing the 70m (230 ft.) antenna and the 34m (110 ft.) antennas. The Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex, located outside Canberra, Australia, is one of the three complexes which comprise NASA's Deep Space Network. The other complexes are located in Goldstone, California, and Madrid, Spain.Credit: NASA.

Rovers and deep space probes can forget about quickly posting
cool high-definition videos to YouTube, given the painfully slow data transfer
rates for most of today's space missions.

But NASA wants to change that by fusing together three aged
space
communication networks into a much faster, more efficient data network
worthy of 21st century missions to the moon, Mars and beyond. And it hopes to
do it all without costing taxpayers an extra cent.

NASA's overhaul aims to boost space communication by as
much as 50 times faster than today's data transfer rates, so that a Mars
mission squeaking by on a few megabits per second might someday get as much as
600 megabits per second, if not more. That could enable far more scientific
payoff per mission in the long run.

"Imagine what you can accomplish with a single
mission instead of several spacecraft flying over several years to collect the
data," said Badri Younes, NASA's deputy associate administrator for Space
Communications and Navigation.

An upgraded network might support the very quick upload
or download of huge video files the size of an HD YouTube video, as opposed to
current capabilities that would struggle to transfer mp3 music files.

Younes worked at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center for a
decade before leaving to join the U.S. Department of Defense. But the U.S.
space agency hired him back in August 2007 for the purpose of revolutionizing
its space communication networks.

From Chevy to Lamborghini

Younes faces the tricky task of creating a new space
communication network out of NASA systems that have not had upgrades since the
early 1990s. He also must ensure that the rebuilding period does not interfere
with NASA's support of ongoing space missions, ranging from the International
Space Station to Mars orbiters.

"It's like driving a 1960s Chevy that's beat up and
losing paint while going at 90 mph, and being pushed to convert that into a
Lamborghini while driving 90 mph without losing a beat," Younes told SPACE.com.

The challenge goes beyond consolidating command centers
and launching new satellites to support NASA's Space Network (SN), Near-earth
Network (NEN), and Deep
Space Network (DSN). Younes has already begun to reduce maintenance and
operation costs by putting in new automated and smart systems, so that he can transfer
the cost savings within his $400 million annual budget into new space
communications capabilities and technologies.

In the past, NASA has cobbled together its space
communication networks based on the demands of each new space mission. But that
piecemeal approach has limited the technological upgrades, because each mission
had to pay out of its own pocket.

By doing a wholesale upgrade of a unified space
communication network, Younes can offer mission managers capabilities that they
would otherwise have never dreamed of. He has already targeted 2018 as the latest
date for integrating the three existing space networks.

Lasers point to the future

The U.S. space agency is already pushing new
communication innovations such as disruption tolerant networking. The NASA-developed
Internet protocol ensures that communication delays or disruptions from solar
storms won't disrupt the flow of data packets across space networks, and has
undergone testing in near-Earth as well as deep-space missions.

Speed boosts may come from newer Ka-band transmitters
that still work in the radio spectrum ? the Lunar
Reconnaissance Orbiter can send or receive 100 megabits per second with its
Ka-band transmitter. NASA also plans to implement communication protocols that
can increase the virtual bandwidth available to space missions,

But one of the biggest communication revolutions will
come from laser-driven optical communication, as opposed to current space
communications based on radio frequencies. Lasers could allow data transfer
speeds of up to 600 megabits per second, as Younes hopes, or perhaps even
speeds surpassing 1 gigabit per second (1 gigabit = 1024 megabits) from the
moon or Mars. That data stream could be even higher for a near-Earth spacecraft
or outpost such as the space station.

NASA has already enlisted the help of MIT to build and demo
a laser communications system aboard the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment
Explorer, slated for launch in late 2011. A successful test would go a long way
toward ensuring that NASA's Constellation astronauts returning to the moon
have a much faster connection to Earth.

"You have to start with the premise that anything
you do in life can always be optimized," Younes said.